Working it Out
by WRTRD
Summary: Just as Katherine Beckett was finally ready to make a move on Richard Castle, he pulled away. What the hell happened? Why is he with that flight attendant? Not for nothing was Beckett the youngest woman in the history of the NYPD to make detective. She's going to figure this out if it kills her. Unless she kills him first. Set during 4x20, "The Limey." Complete.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

She's calm. She's cool. She's analytical. She's grounded, she's centered, she's focussed. She's unruffled. She has a plan.

Kate Beckett takes a deep, cleansing breath as she sets up the white board, the brand-new, double-sided magnetic white board on a stand, in her living room. It cost her $130.64, with tax. One hundred thirty dollars and sixty-four cents, a small price to pay for working out her plan, solving her case. She looks dispassionately at the board as she moves it six inches to the right, next to a small side table. The table top is meticulously arranged with a set of new dry-erase markers (black, green, blue, red, $7 plus tax), a clear plastic box of white board magnets ($3.69 on sale), and a small stack of computer print outs. She inhales again. Time to get to work.

Beckett leans over and picks up a printout, the first of twelve which she has trimmed to a precise five by eight inches. While holding it in her left hand, she takes a magnet with her right and uses that to secure the printout to the upper left-hand corner of the board. She repeats the ritual eleven times, until she has three neat rows of printouts, four to a row. Printouts of twelve drivers' licenses, ten issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles of the great State of New York, and two by the State of California. She uncaps the black marker and writes, in block capitals, the name of each licensed driver beneath the appropriate print out. When she has finished, she recaps the marker and takes a few steps back to examine her handiwork. Kate Beckett is calm. She's as calm as the surface of a lake, a lake with the Loch Ness monster lurking just beneath the mirrored surface, ready to leap up and seize her with its herpetological fangs. She has never been this fucking calm in her entire fucking life.

Her bimbo board is ready, and so is she. Her bimbo board is just like a murder board, except that it's in her apartment rather than the precinct, and the only homicide in question is a hypothetical one. She could kill Jacinda. She could kill Castle right now, too, except that she wants him alive. Emphasis on want. Oh, and alive. Oh, and him.

It's her own personal Dirty Dozen, twelve women to whom Castle has been (or is, in the case of the newly-acquired arm candy Jacinda) attracted. Magnetically attracted, a magnetism more powerful than these little doohickeys on her bimbo board. The Richard Castle Dirty Dozen are, in rough chronological order:

 **Kyra Blaine** , his first true love. The One Who Got Away. He'd deny it, but he's still carrying a torch for her. She's like some damn eternal flame, or those birthday-cake candles you blow out and they light right back up again.

 **Meredith Castle** , the first wife, a.k.a. The Deep-Fried Twinkie. The one he's probably still shagging every time she comes to New York City, ostensibly to see their daughter, just like he probably shagged her on some horrible shag rug twenty years ago. A shag rug would definitely be Meredith's style.

 **Sophia Turner** , the CIA agent he met eleven and a half years ago. He based Clara Strike, a character in the first Derrick Storm novel, on her. He followed her. She was his muse. The muse he slept with, unlike his current alleged muse. The CIA spy-turned-traitor who sold out her country to the highest bidder before another CIA agent did them all a favor and put a bullet through her head a few weeks ago, just before Sophia could do exactly the same thing to Castle and to her.

 **Chelsea Noyes** , supermodel. IQ of rain. "Relationship" ended after six weeks, but not before he had taken her to Paris _and_ Rio.

 **Gina Griffin** , his publisher and second wife. Chiseled. Perfect. Never a hair out of place. Must leave the hair at home when she works out at the gym two hours a day. Smart but a harpie. Loath as Beckett is to defend Castle at the moment, she believes that Gina should stop haranguing him 24/7. Can't she see how counterproductive it is? If he wants a woman beating on him, he'll choose Lady Irena. See same row, two items over.

 **Willow Jones** , supermodel. See data filed under Chelsea Noyes, but substitute Rome and the Riviera for Paris and Rio.

 **Lady Irena** , dominatrix and former attorney. Owner of Lady Irena's House of Pain. Castle almost salivated on her when they interviewed her on a case two years ago. He said she was hypnotic. His word: hypnotic. He claimed that he was referring to her crimson-gash lipstick, but she doubted it. Beckett is absolutely certain that he returned to the House of Pain later, and hypnosis was not what Irena was practicing on him.

 **Ellie Monroe** , actress. Star of _Viper Mountain_ and similar movies for which Meryl Streep must not have been available. Had sex with Castle to get a role. He had no objection.

 **Natalie Rhodes** , actress. So resolutely Method that she'd barely begun her Nikki Heat "assignment" before she was hauling Castle off to her hotel room and he had his tongue down her throat in the precinct elevator. While the door was wide open.

 **Carolina Hendricks** , supermodel. Lasted only three weeks, but two of them were at Castle's house in the Hamptons. His bedroom probably still smells of her perfume, "Carolina." Incredibly imaginative name.

 **Serena Kaye** , insurance investigator and art thief. No matter how noble her intentions, she's still a thief. The way Castle stared at her ass? Must have left burn marks.

 **Jacinda Stevens** , flight attendant. It took a slightly illegal search to learn her last name and thus get access to her license. She's currently behind the wheel of Castle's Ferrari, when she's not between the sheets and under him.

So what is it about these women? What does he sees in them that he no longer sees in her? She needs similarities, patterns, anything to help her.

Maybe it's hair color. Beckett is a brunette. Three of the suspects/bimbos are also, but two—Kyra and Sophia—are ancient history. The only other one is Ellie Monroe, and even she goes back two years. He definitely gravitates to blondes, apparently uninterested in the source of the color, i.e. DNA or bottle. Eight of the twelve are blonde. Hmm. What about redheads? Meredith and Irena have red hair, as does his mother, Martha. No, God, no, she's not going there. Bring on the brain bleach. Or the Clairol bleach, some kind of bleach. Wait, could it as simple as that? Should she hit the hair-care section at the drug store and come home with a package of Preference by L'Oréal? Voilà, a blonde? Voilà, she's suddenly Castle's preference?

Maybe boobs are it. Most of these women have significantly larger breasts than she. If only it's the hair, though. God knows dying her hair would be a lot cheaper than getting silicone implants. She's unwilling to go that far, anyway, even as she mentally fixates on the expression he had as he gawked at the jigglers on parade in that plastic surgeon's office a few years ago. She needs some coffee.

She needs some coffee, but not the crap that she makes at home. It used to be perfectly fine, the coffee she made every morning. It was hot, it did its job, woke her up, set her nerves jangling. Thanks to Castle, it's not good enough any more. Thanks a lot, jerkwad, she thinks. You made it impossible for me to enjoy coffee in the comfort of my own home. What she needs now, what she craves, is the perfection wrought by the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider of a coffeemaker that Castle bought and had some engineer install in the precinct break room. And then there are the pounds and pounds of beans that he has delivered there every other week. From a volcanic hillside in Hawaii. From a mountain top in Jamaica. From every inaccessible we-are-the-best coffee plantation on the planet. "Can't have New York's Finest drinking swill," he said. Yeah, well. Maybe she'll just make a crappy cup of coffee here. She won't put any of that vanilla from Madagascar in it, either. That billion-dollar-an-ounce bottle he gave her. That'll show him.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

She's had her coffee. It wasn't bad. Not bad at all, really. She did add a little vanilla, but only because she checked the label and noted that it had an expiration date. Three years away, granted, but she's not a wasteful person, and she's not letting that vanilla go to waste. She just won't tell Castle. She's had a mug of industrial-strength coffee and she's feeling perky. Perky as can be.

In the interest of both science and good detective work, Beckett decides to explore what she'd look like as a blonde. She may not be a celebrity, but she doesn't want anyone to recognize her as she tracks down this lead, so she breaks out the Natalie Rhodes "famous person disguise"—cap and sunglasses—and heads for a Walgreen's a couple of blocks away.

When she gets to the hair-care aisle she is quickly overwhelmed by the number of choices. Can't she just be blonde? Ordinary blonde? Apparently there is no such thing. Should she go with whisper soft blonde? How is that possible? What does it mean? Light golden blonde, delicate golden blonde, sun blonde, lightest ash blonde, ultra light ash blonde. What is that, anyway? Wouldn't "lightest" imply most light? Does "ultra" trump "lightest"? Whoa, hold on. She takes a box from the shelf and squints at it. Beige blonde? Who would choose that? Oh, and worse, there's something right next to it called extra beige blonde. What, the world's most boring shade of blonde? She sighs, her shoulders slumping, and puts the beige-blonde package back. This isn't working. She walks towards the door, stopping to return the little shopping basket that she had picked up on her way in, and contemplates Plan B. She's thinking of it as Plan B now that she has abandoned the hair-coloring option, which has retroactively become Plan A. She doesn't actually have a Plan B yet, but she's working on it. Plan A and Plan B are subsets of her overall plan, which is to solve her case.

Outside on the sidewalk, she's still thinking. Detecting. One thing she detects, as she chews on her lip, is a tiny drop of vanilla-enhanced coffee, which she licks off and savors. It is Archimedes's bath, it is Proust's madeleine, it is Newton's apple, it is her aha! moment. She has just remembered a small shop twenty minutes' walk from where she's standing, Miss Tresses, that carries a spectacular assortment of wigs. She can be an instant and temporary blonde, a blonde of every hue, style and length. She can be Scarlett Johansson or Dolly Parton (from the neck up, unless she OD's on silicone) or Heidi Klum. She has been growing her hair since the week after she met, and arrested, Castle. Maybe she should cut it again. Castle might have a thing for longer hair, though. Except, come to think of it, two very recent Castlettes—that Carolina Hendricks creature (Bimbo #10) and Serena Kaye (Bimbo #11)—have short hair. Or shortish. Carolina's is a feathery pixie and Serena's doesn't reach her shoulders.

How the hell does she even remember this crap? Whatever, it's wig time. On the walk to Miss Tresses, Beckett sizes up the hair of almost every woman she passes, particularly the blondes. When she has to wait at a corner for the traffic light to change, she stares so obsessively at a few that she could be taken for some perv hair fetishist. Good thing her sunglasses are concealing her eyes, more or less.

Miss Tresses has an enormous inventory for such a small store. Beckett spends an hour trying on an array of wigs, peering in the mirror, tossing her head, fluffing the hair, taking a selfie of any model that is marginally acceptable. She's now heavy with the knowledge that blonde is not her best look, but she settles at last on the least unbecoming wig. "Very Charlize Theron, sweetheart," the proprietor says, handing her a bag with her alternate hair inside, perched on a creepy, faceless styrofoam head.

Now for the field test. She needs to see Castle's reaction to her as a blonde, but she'd rather no one else she knows does. Ah, there's a coffee bar across the street; a small infusion of caffeine is sure to inspire her. She orders a sixteen-ounce latte—okay, not such a small infusion—and takes it to the counter at the window. Perched on a high stool at the end, she gives her mind permission to wander, let ideas bounce off each other since she can't bounce them off him. Her brain feels like a pinball machine, and it screams TILT at her every minute or two. She has finished her coffee and is contemplating another when a red-headed little girl and her father stroll by, hand in hand.

Hey! She doesn't need that extra coffee! She's got it. She's got it. She mentally thanks the duo, the sweet father and daughter who have now disappeared from view. Tomorrow is Sunday. Every Sunday morning Castle goes to a patisserie, Chez Manon, around the corner from his loft. It's his own brand of religion. Every Sunday at eight-thirty, he goes and buys a pain au chocolat for Alexis. Jacinda or no Jacinda, he'll be doing that in—she checks her watch—fifteen hours and six minutes. This is Alexis's last year in high school; she'll be headed off to college in a few months and this weekly ritual will end. No way will he be missing a Sunday before then. He'll be there tomorrow, on his own, and so will she.

Beckett takes a leisurely stroll home, making a slight detour so she can visit the Strand, the enormous used-book store in the West Village. She has unaccountably found herself wanting to spend the evening with one of the few Tolstoy works she has never read, _The Kreutzer Sonata_ , his novella about sexual jealousy and rage. The Strand has never let her down and it doesn't this time, either; five minutes later, book in hand, she's back on the street, headed for her apartment.

The evening proves very satisfying: Tolstoy, washed down with a glass of milk and a short stack of Oreos. Before going to bed, she spends half an hour mulling over what to wear the next morning. What would Charlize Theron choose? Beckett is trying to think blonde thoughts, but they seem the same as brunette ones. Huh. She finally decides on black skinny jeans, a ferocious pair of ankle boots, a bright red jacket and a slinky black blouse. She holds them up to the mirror. Red and black. Very rouge et noir, speaking of great literature, this one of the French variety, perfect for sitting in a patisserie. Eat your heart out, Jacinda, if you have one. Underneath that dubiously blonde hair.

She hates to admit it, but she's anxious. Wakes up at four, four-thirty, five, finally says the hell with, showers, puts on a tad more make up than usual, gets dressed, and frets until quarter to eight, when she leaves for Chez Manon. She needs to snag a good seat—there are only a dozen in the small bakery—and be well positioned before Castle sails through the front door. It hadn't occurred to her that the wig would itch, or be hot, but it does, and is. Just ignore it, she tells herself. Mind over matter. Wig over matter.

Good, very good. She's just the second person to arrive at the patisserie, and takes the tiny table near the back of the shop, but in the direct line of vision of everyone who comes in. She sips at her coffee, tries not to tug on the wig. Gets a second cup, and a croissant. Steadies herself on the unsteady cafe chair. The bell at the door tinkles, and there he is. Alone. Smiling already as he approaches the glass-covered shelves of pastries. He can't possibly have missed her, could he? How could he not have seen her? He places his order and turns his head to the left. He jumps. No mistaking it. He is flabbergasted.

"Beckett?" He's frozen to the spot, and he's gaping at her.

"Castle," Beckett answers, with a tiny nod.

The server at the counter clears her throat. "Mister Castle?" she says, holding the small wax-paper bag aloft. "Mister Castle?"

He turns back to the server. "What? Oh, oh, excuse me." He pays at the register, does a one-eighty and walks to Beckett's table. "What are you doing here?"

"Bonjour to you, too, Castle. I just stopped in for a little breakfast. Petit déjeuner." He usually swoons at her French.

He's not swooning, just gaping. "But your hair."

"What about it?" She's calm. Calm as that unruffled lake.

"What did you do to it?"

She shrugs, feigns surprise. "Do? Nothing. I didn't do anything to it."

He's pressing now, just a bit. Leaning in as if she were some odd chunk of evidence that required closer examination. "You did. You did something to your hair. You're so gorgeous as a brunette. Why are you blonde all of a sudden?"

She hadn't seen that coming. Of all the things he could have said, why did he have to say that? "It's a _wig_ , Castle. Your mother is an actress, surely you're acquainted with them. I was having a bad hair day and wore this for the hell of it."

"Good. Because, sorry, but it looks like hell."

And then he leaves. Just leaves. Leaves her there in all her blonde non-glory, and walks out the door.

Well, _merde_. Shit.

 **A/N** Thank you for all the wonderful feedback on chapter 1.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

The French roast has lost its flavor, the croissant, its appeal. As soon as Castle is out of the patisserie, Beckett rises from the table, tosses the remains of her breakfast in the appropriate receptacle, and starts for home. Rather than walk and try to enjoy the early spring air, or lick her wounds in the privacy of a taxi, she opts for rubbing salt in them herself by taking the subway. Because it's a Sunday, and because track work is underway, she knows she'll have to wait in the bleak, grubby station for at least a quarter of an hour before a train arrives. That suits her fine. She stomps down the stairs, swipes her Metrocard at the turnstile, strides to the end of the platform, yanks the wig off her head and looks around. No one here. Okay. She draws herself up, glares at the tunnel wall and screams, "SCREW YOU, CASTLE!" The three little words are still reverberating in the concrete space when she hears some rustling on the tracks. Apparently she has alarmed the rats. She wonders if they'd like her wig. It might make very nice nests. She'd be providing homes for rodents who might otherwise be forced to sleep in shredded panty hose or Big Mac boxes. It would be an act of altruism, really. But then, mindful of signs urging passengers not to throw things on the tracks, she drops the wig into the trash can on the platform instead. The little whiskered critters will doubtless find it there. Here comes the train.

There are plenty of seats, but she stands. Better for the circulation. Blood to brain. She's reminded of the time, about a year and a half ago, when Alexis took care of her boyfriend's beloved rat, Theodore. Castle was telling her about it as they approached a murder scene and he asked, "What's the strangest pet you ever had?" and she said, "You." The memory dulls her anger, makes her wistful. What happened, pet?

When the train pulls into her stop, she's transformed into a human projectile: she can't get through the doors, up the stairs, down the street and into her apartment fast enough. She needs the board. It's not the hair. It's not the hair. It's not the hair. It's not the boobs either, she's sure of it. He said she looked like hell. No, he said the wig looked like hell. And, take a breath, he said she was gorgeous. So gorgeous as a brunette. It's not the hair. It's nothing to do with appearance. Appearances to the contrary, Jacinda, it's not about appearance. Before, yeah. But not now.

Kate, she says to herself after closing her front door, you were off the rails, completely off the rails, and now you're on track. Good work, Detective. Another thought lands on top of that one: thank God Castle hadn't heard that. "Cheesy, Beckett," he'd say. "Totally cheesy metaphor. Did you think that up while you were on the subway?" Well, yeah.

She's standing in front of the bimbo board. It's time for a timeline. This is it: Plan C. The first thing she does is to remove three photos from the board, Kyra's, Meredith's and Chelsea's, and put them face down on the table. That's how she'd like them, face down. Not that she's wishing death on them, and it's not really about them, anyway, it's about Castle. Still, she'd rather not have visual reminders of them. The thing about those three women is that they came into Castle's gravitational field before she had even met him. Chelsea—she of the trips to Paris and Rio—was on her way out when Castle arrived at the Twelfth. The fact that the other two resurfaced is almost irrelevant, so they're no longer part of the equation. Gina, too, in a way. Beckett knows exactly why Gina came back into Castle's life, and much of that one—The Great Hamptons Disaster—is on her shoulders. The Lost Summer of 2010. She shudders. So basically she's down to a bimbo octet. Four down, eight to go.

The timeline that she's mapping has two principal branches: what was going on in Castle's life at the time of his involvement with Bimbo X, and what was going on in hers. Most important though, is this: how did, and do, they intersect? She lays out three of her markers: blue for the Castle branch, green for hers, and red for the intersection. Red as in hot, red as in angry, red as in stop. Red, so help her, as in passion.

First up: Willow Jones, nit-brained supermodel almost indistinguishable from Chelsea Noyes. Okay, she was the summer of 2009. Castle had just told her about having uncovered evidence in her mother's case. Told her, Beckett, not her, Willow, though who knows? Maybe he told Willow in a brief interval when she wasn't either looking in the mirror or moaning in bed with him or both. There's a hideous image, Castle and Willow reflected in a mirrored ceiling. She tries to shake it out of her head. Back to the moment. Back to the hospital corridor when she essentially kicked him out of her life. She had told him not to touch her mother's case, and he had. Couldn't leave it alone. Then he went to the Hamptons for the summer where he met Willow at some party and took off with her for Paris and Rio. Beckett had stayed in the city and drowned her sorrow and and rage in a hail of sprinkled doughnuts with Sorenson, for God's sake. Agent Will Sorenson. You'd think she'd have known better, after he had expected her to drop everything a couple of years earlier and follow him to Boston. Dutiful wife, blah blah blah. She gets it: Willow Jones. Gorgeous. Even her name is, you know, willowy. No irritating intellectual challenging from her.

Beckett puts down the red marker for a moment. What if she had said to Castle, "I'm pissed off that you did the one thing I asked you not to do, but thank you for trying to help with my mom's case, for finding something I hadn't." That was it, wasn't it? She was incensed that he, in a matter of days, had found something so important that she, working for years, hadn't. That's what stung, really. It wasn't just that she was afraid of drowning in the case again, it was that her pride was hurt. She was so furious. No wonder he found his way to Willow so fast. At least he had the wits to end it fast, she'll give him that, too. She takes down Willow's card and looks at the board again.

Lady Irena. Hmm. When exactly did she whip Castle into a frenzy? Beckett starts running cases through her brain. Ah, the one with the dominatrix immediately followed the one involving the murder of Cano Vega, the sensational Cuban-born baseball player. She remembers teasing Castle with a vision of her in a bathing suit in the sizzling Cuban sun. Right after that, when they were in a sports agent's office, he called her use of the word "veritable" sexy. No wonder. Veritable had two syllables too many for Willow Jones. He wouldn't have heard any words like veritable when he was with her. Beckett shakes her head again. She knows precisely what she said to Castle after the veritable moment. "You should hear me say 'fallacious'." She swore she almost heard his tongue land on the floor. That was a good period in their partnership. She loved winding him up. Loved the verbal fencing, sexual innuendo division, that they did then. It was fun. It was, what? Promising. It was promising. Castle was starting to get under skin in the right way then, but she still held him off with the point of an epée. Not quite ready for the real thrust.

Maybe that's what lead him to Lady Irena, virtually the next day. Irena was sexy as hell and smart as a whip. Huh, Castle would like that, "smart as a whip." If Beckett's ever back on speaking terms with him, she'll tell him. He never confessed/confided/bragged to her that he'd hooked up with Irena, but she's sure he did. Saw it all over his face. Saw it in the way he walked all week. He'd have had to pay Irena, though, big bucks. She, on the other hand, comes for free. Oh, God. Not what she meant. Yes it is. Anyway, she doesn't care if he was with Irena. Makes no difference to her. Shit, who's she kidding? It does make a difference. And hey, it's not as though she doesn't have a kinky side. She's got a box of stuff to prove it. Top shelf of her closet, labeled COOK BOOKS, in case anyone should be, you know, snooping.

She needs some coffee now. Possibly something stronger.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

She goes with the something stronger option: Scotch, neat. Not just Scotch, single malt—the single malt equivalent of the Madagascar vanilla in her kitchen cabinet. Interesting, the two most expensive bottles in her apartment came from the same person. No, three. He, that same person, also gave her an incredible bottle of French perfume after her previous place blew up. "This will banish any lingering scent of smoke-infused clothes, Beckett," he said, handing her the little bag. It had, too, though she was nervous about wearing it very often. Didn't want to get to like it so much that she went out and bought it for herself. It wasn't even in the outer limits of her price range. More like the exurbs, or another state completely.

Like her state of mind.

She takes the first sip standing up, leaning on the stove. The cold, steel surface pressed against the sharp jut of her hip bone reminds her that she should probably eat something, definitely eat something. Leaving her glass between two burners, she rifles through her cupboards and finds some not-quite stale Wheat Thins. Her fridge offers up a chunk of Cheddar that's edible once she scrapes off the moldy layer on top. She makes a plateful of five cheese-and-cracker sandwiches and carries it, along with her Scotch, to the sofa. She can see the bimbo board clearly from where she's sitting, and the more she looks at, the clearer her mind gets. Maybe the alcohol is sharpening it. Or the protein. Ellie Monroe was a blip. Not worth spending time on that little—. She lasted about a minute. Made his dalliances—wouldn't he love that, dalliances?—with Natalie Rhodes and Carolina Hendricks look like long-term commitments. And to be fair, he never had sex with Natalie Rhodes. Amazing, but true. Even more amazing? Natalie had asked her if Castle was gay, figured he must be since he hadn't slept with her. Beckett snorts at the memory of that conversation, sending a piece of cheese-smeared Wheat Thin halfway across the room.

Carolina Hendricks. Last summer's string-bikini supermodel, the one he took up with while she was at her father's cabin, swaddled in bandages and an oversized sweatshirt. Beckett may have been alone up there, but she wasn't completely removed from the world that summer as she recovered from major surgery. She read the paper. Papers. She knows exactly when Castle and Carolina became An Item: precisely sixty days after she told him that she didn't remember being shot and needed a couple of days before they talked. A couple of days that became a couple of months as she played and replayed the memory of him cradling her head in the cemetery at Captain Montgomery's funeral and telling her he loved her. Double fault there, her fault, his fault.

She realizes that she has finished her snack, lunch, whatever it was that went with her drink. Her mind really is sharp now. Maybe it's more than the food, but the something—she's not sure what—that is flooding her brain as her rage is receding. Is it nostalgia? You can't be nostalgic about something you never had. Aha, but she had. Or has. Or, oh God, had, past tense. Something she wants very much to drag back to the present, and into the future, into the forever. She had something that not one of Castle's Dirty Dozen had—except Kyra Blaine, who is long gone and ultimately really was sweet to Beckett. What she has, had, has is friendship. She and Castle are friends. Not friends with benefits. Friends. Not yet open books, but wouldn't that be good? She has told him things she never told another soul, and he has done the same to her. They have become best friends. Never said so, never BFFed each other, but they are.

She looks at the board and dismisses Serena Kaye. Waves her away as if she were some little incidental, barely worth mentioning. That leaves Jacinda, the caboose on the bimbo express. She seems to be nothing but decorative, but who knows? Maybe she's a theoretical physicist on sabbatical. Nah, Beckett heard overheard part of what only the most charitable would call a conversation between Castle and Jacinda, and that was no scientist talking. The real question, the only question, is why now? Why now, when she and Castle were closer than ever, and very close, she had thought, to making the leap?

Beckett has always had an elephantine memory. Maybe that's part of the problem. She doesn't forget anything and she has a terrible time putting anything behind her. If it's hard to forget, is it equally hard to forgive? A great memory serves her well professionally; it's a godsend for a detective. But oh, can it fuck up a relationship. Click, boom, lightning bolt. A light bulb the size of an SUV just went off in her head. She's got it. It was last week, the bombing case, and it was a fuck-up of epic proportions. She puts her hands over her eyes to banish the mental image. It doesn't work.

He heard her.

He heard her in interrogation, grilling the kid who swore he didn't remember anything because of the trauma of the bombing. "The hell you don't remember," she said. "Do you want to know trauma? I was shot in the chest and I remember every second of it." When she came out of the room shortly after that, letting the kid stew for a while, she was surprised to find that Castle had taken off. No explanation, just a vague I-have-something-I-have-to-do comment to Ryan and Esposito.

Her face flushed scarlet at first, but now the blood drains so fast that she feels dizzy. She puts her head between her knees and takes a series of deep breaths. After a moment, she straightens up and checks the time. It's 2:47, that weird no-man's-land time of afternoon, too late for lunch, too early for a drink. Except, oh yeah, she just had one.

She runs to the bathroom and brushes her teeth. She swaps her silk blouse for a soft blue jersey so that she's not wearing what she had been this morning in Chez Manon, in case Castle noticed. Probably not, what with the wig, but she makes the switch anyway. She swipes a brush through her hair and sweeps it into a ponytail, then dashes to the closet for her running shoes. She's on the run. She's a running mother. She's running to his loft, which is only a mile away, because it is the fastest possible way for her to get there. She doesn't care who else is there, as long as Castle is.

Ten minutes, 39 seconds later she is at his door. She spends 21 seconds giving herself instructions to calm down; at eleven minutes, she knocks. Is anyone there? No one has come to the door. She presses her ear against it: nothing. She decides to knock louder, more confidently. Okay, that seems to have worked: she thinks she hears movement. She has just wiped her sweaty palms on her back pockets when the door swings open, with Castle on the other side. He's wearing socks, old sweatpants so baggy that's he's one quick move away from full exposure, and an NYPD AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT tee shirt.

She doesn't have to draw on her experience as one of the NYPD's finest detectives to realize that he is alone, or at least Jacinda-less. They're freeze-framed, looking at each other like participants in some bizarre stand-off. She swallows, hard.

"I heard you."

He shakes his head sharply, like a dog shaking off bathwater. "What?"

She takes a half step forward and swallows hard again. "I heard you. In the cemetery. I heard you in the cemetery last May, just like you heard me in the interrogation room last week. And I can explain. I want to explain, need to."

He is expressionless. She sees that his grip on the doorknob has tightened, but that's his only tell. "Has it occurred to you that I might be busy?"

He didn't even use her name. She can feel her heart contract, but she moves another half step closer. "Busy with what?" She waves her arm down, gesturing to his wardrobe of the moment. "You don't look busy."

"I'm a writer. I don't wear a suit when I work."

"So you're writing?"

"Uh huh."

"So you're saying your busy?"

"Yeah," he says, more emphatically than she'd like. "I'm saying I'm busy."

This is it. Beckett leans in, grabs him by the sleeves around his (substantial) biceps, and pulls him flush against her. She's up on her tiptoes and they're thigh to thigh, belly to belly, chest to chest. Her mouth is an inch away from his. "Too busy for _this_?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

Beckett slides her hands up from Castle's shirt sleeves to his head. "I'm going to kiss you now," she says. "I'm going to kiss you harder than I've kissed anyone in the thirty-two years, four months, one week, four days, and nine hours of my life. Got that?"

His eyes are open wide. "You counted?"

"Seven sixty-eight on my math SATs, Castle." And then she kisses him. She's going to hang on until she gets some reaction from him, any kind of reaction. She's trying to seal a deal here. It's a bad news/good news situation. He doesn't push her away, or worse, ask her to leave, but he doesn't reply in kind. Still, there is just the faintest suggestion of reciprocation, as if he's trying to rein himself in, but can't quite manage.

Finally, she pulls away. "I waited thirty-two years, four months, one week, four days, nine hours and one minute to do that," she says.

He's quiet and impassive for a long moment before he says, evenly, "Was it worth it?"

"I hope it will be," she replies, not quite so evenly. "I hope I'll get to try again in a little while." She pauses. "If you'll let me. And if you'll let me come in, first of all."

She can sense him wavering, and she stays still, never taking her eyes off him. He opens the door a bit wider and moves backward so that she can enter the loft. Jamming her hands a little awkwardly in the front pockets of her jeans, she walks towards the living room and stops, turning partway to face him. "Could we sit down for a few minutes?"

He looks as though he's reminding himself to exhibit his customary good manners. "Sure, why don't we go to the sofa. Can I get you something to drink?"

What she really needs is some more of the Scotch she'd had before tearing over here, but forces herself to say, "Uh, coffee? Please?" Great choice, Beckett, she thinks. Caffeine to steady the nerves.

He heads for the kitchen without comment, and returns in less than a minute. "Already made, Beckett," he says, handing her a mug and holding on to another for himself.

"So, you were expecting me?" A nervous giggle—she never giggles—squeaks out.

"No."

"Sorry, I was trying to lighten the mood a little bit."

"Oh."

She's barely hanging onto her rapidly receding courage, so she takes a fortifying slug of coffee. She won't back off now. Won't won't won't won't won't. Not after cracking the case. "I'm just going to begin at the beginning, Castle."

He's sitting at least five feet away from her, but at least they're sharing the same piece of furniture. "Where's that?"

She's not exactly sure. Maybe that's not how she should start. Oh, what the hell, she'll just jump in with both sneakered feet and both trembling hands. "The cemetery. The cemetery and the interrogation room."

"Sounds like two different beginnings to me, Beckett."

At least there's no edge to his voice. There might even be a scintilla of interest. "Not really," she says. "They're two beginnings of the same story. I'm going to start with the more recent one, because I know—I mean, I just worked out, which I'll get to after this. I just figured out that you heard me with that bombing-case suspect, heard me say that I remembered everything about being shot last year. And everything includes your telling me you loved me. By now that's pretty much everything to me. You know, that you loved me then."

"I did."

"But I didn't know that. Or, I mean, uh, I didn't completely believe it."

That gets a reaction. He turns sharply towards her. "How the hell did you not believe that?"

"Because, Castle. Because I thought it was a variation on a dying declaration. I thought I was dying and you made that declaration, declared that you loved me, so that I could die with those words in my head. Like you were giving me a really kind sendoff, you know?"

"That's what you thought? How could—"

She wants to reach out to him, but he's too far away. "I didn't think it right that instant, Castle. I thought it later. I wasn't sure of my memories when I was in the hospital. But later, when I was by myself at my Dad's cabin, I was. And I know I told you not to call me, but you didn't. I was sure you would."

"Why?"

"Because since when do you do what I tell you?" She smiles a tiny smile. Hopes it registers with him. He looks at his coffee.

"Castle?" She's trying to will him to look over at her. When he doesn't, his gaze fixed on the apparently riveting contents of his mug, she scoots over until they are less than a foot apart. "Castle? You didn't call me. All summer. All summer I was praying that you'd call me and say it again, but you didn't. So I thought you hadn't really meant it. That you loved me. And then I got back to the city and you were so furious at me."

"Damn straight I was, Kate."

Oh, he'd called her Kate. Maybe. He'd called her Kate just now. That's progress, right? "I know, I know. I wish that I'd told you all this when we were on the swings, but I didn't. I couldn't. I was too scared of everything right then. But at least I came away from there thinking this was the beginning, the start of something for us, and I know you did, too. "

"I did. Until I didn't."

"Okay. So the first beginning was your telling me you loved me. But here's something you don't know. The day after we closed that first case? The first case after I came back?"

"Yeah?"

"I started seeing a therapist that morning and have been ever since. Sometimes once a week, usually two or three. Have the guy on speed dial. I'm doing it so that I can square myself away and not be such a mess. And so I can ask you, 'Do you love me, Castle?' And have you ask me the same question."

He's still silent.

"Have you ask me the same question, only, you know, my name at the end, not yours." She clears her throat. "Okay, so the second beginning is when I, the former mess—I thought former mess—screwed up monumentally when I told the kid I remembered everything about my shooting. I was doing it to provoke him. It was also true, but the horrible thing is that that was the day I was going to ask you to repeat what you said to me in the cemetery. You know I don't believe in coincidences, and yet there it is. God, Castle. I was going to ask you if you loved me, but when I came out, you were gone. I was going to tell you, even if you didn't ask me. I was going to tell that I love you."

Now _there's_ a reaction. He startles so forcefully that all the coffee—fortunately now lukewarm— left in his mug, at least eight ounces of it, lands all over her. She sees it coming towards her in a slow-motion arc, and just manages to close her eyes. It's in her hair and running down her cheeks, it's soaking her blue jersey top. When she opens her eyes, his are no longer visible, hidden beneath the NYPD tee shirt that he's tugging over his head. She's still blinking away Jamaican Blue Mountain brew when he thrusts the shirt at her, pressing it against her collarbone.

And just like that, the air changes and the mood shifts. There's his chest, right in front of her. Mother of God. His shirtless chest with just a light patch of hair in the center, and muscles that should be insured by Lloyd's of London and carved into Mount Rushmore. She knows she's staring and she doesn't care. It's not like he hasn't stared plenty at her over the last few years.

Her pectoral reverie is interrupted by him saying, "I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Here," as he dabs helplessly at the neckline of her jersey.

Her hand, independent of the frontal lobe of her cerebrum, moves to cover his. "It's okay," she says, forcing her eyes upwards. "This is an ancient top." She tries to straighten out his shirt and hands it back to him. "You must be, uh. Um. Aren't you cold?" She can see that his nipples have tightened. Tries not to see, and then she withdraws the shirt. "Oh, wait. This is wet. You won't want to wear it." She swallows audibly, at least audibly to herself. She thinks she sounds like some gurgling machine. "Maybe you want to put on something dry? Because I really, really want to finish my unplanned speech here."

 **A/N** One chapter to go, which I will post tomorrow. Thank you so much for all your support.


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

 **A/N** Please note: this chapter is rated M.

Beckett, bearing more than a faint resemblance to a woodland animal frozen in flight, is clutching the soggy, scrunched-up tee shirt as Castle glances down at his chest, apparently surprised to find it uncovered.

"Oh. Well. Oh, no. I'm fine like this," he says, absent-mindedly running his palm from sternum to navel. "Really. Not cold."

What is she supposed to do with the shirt? She can't drop it on the sofa or the rug. What about the coffee table? No, it could stain the wood. How about over the lampshade? She shudders at the frat-party image, but she can't keep holding onto the thing. She has a good arm. Years of playing catch with her Dad. Just do it. She makes a 90-degree turn, wads up the shirt, fires toward the kitchen, and watches it land with a satisfying splat in the middle of the sink.

"Beckett?" Castle's eyes are wide. "That was amazing. Can you do that again?"

Now she's embarrassed. "Should be able to after what I spent on Yankee fantasy camp a year and a half ago." Oh, God, no. What happened to the filter in her brain? It's almost always in perfect condition, and now it's shot full of holes. Shit. This is all his fault. Maybe she'll be lucky; maybe he didn't hear her.

Oh, but he did. "You went to Yankee fantasy camp? How did I miss knowing that?"

"Secret, Castle. It was a secret. Is a secret, please."

She can see him doing the calculations. "A year and a half ago? Wait, that's when you took a week's vacation for what you told us was a yoga retreat in the Catskills? The only vacation I have ever, ever, ever known you to take. I had visions of you in clingy tank tops and yoga pants and downward dog, but this is so much better. What did you do? I bet you ran laps in tight little shorts with the NY logo, sweating in the October sun in Tampa. Were you shagging flies? Taking batting practice with your jersey tied in a knot under your, uh—"

"Yes, Castle," she says, putting her hand out like a traffic cop, willing him to stop. "Enough already."

"Not enough for me, Beckett."

He smiles, he actually honest-to-God smiles. Maybe the suddenly porous nature of her brain filter has its upside.

"Castle? Could I drag you back to the present for a minute?"

His smile vanishes. He looks, what, she's not sure. Contemplative? At least not angry. He blinks slowly, and then he looks directly and seriously into her eyes. "You mean the present where you were going to tell me you love me?"

"Yeah," she says, her posture suddenly soft. "Yeah, that one."

He's silent, and she has to press ahead. Tell him her story. "Um, this may seem, um, convoluted, but if I could just say."

"Go on."

"Okay, before I realized that you had heard me? I was so hurt and so angry."

"Two emotions that are not unknown to me, Beckett, especially lately."

"I know, I know, I'm sorry." She bows her head so sharply her chin almost rests on her collarbone, and then lifts it up to meet his gaze. "I just. May I explain, please?"

"Sure."

She's beginning to regret having tossed his shirt to the kitchen. First, and it's a very big first, because of the distraction of his bare chest and the fact that his muscles ripple, yeah, ripple, ripple and _swell_ , when he moves. Second, because she has nothing to occupy her hands. She wishes she smoked. She would pick up her coffee mug, but it's almost empty, and there has already been one coffee mug incident in the last few minutes. She puts her hands under her thighs and settles.

"The last couple of days, I've been so mad. And since you were with her, were with Jacinda—"

"For the record, I wasn't with Jacinda." He says it quietly.

"You weren't? Sure looked—sorry, I'm just going to keep going. Anyway, because I didn't know that you'd heard me in interrogation, I couldn't understand why you had turned on me. Shut me out. And you know how that is, it just eats away at you. Eats and eats away. So I decided I'd try to figure out what all the women in your past, or the ones that have been around since I've known you, the twelve—"

"Twelve? Who are you talking about?"

"I'll get there, I promise. This isn't easy, Castle. Or pretty. Well, the women are pretty, really gorgeous, not just pretty, but." Oh, this is misery. Until he says something.

"You're gorgeous, Beckett."

That stops her. She hadn't expected that. It makes her heart sing, but she wants him to be quiet, so she can get through this. "Thank you. But I wanted to figure out what all those women have that I don't, you know? From Meredith to Jacinda. So I worked it like a case, methodically. I looked at the women, tried to find patterns and commonalities, like— Oh, God, you'll think I'm so stupid."

He gives her a look, but keeps his silence.

She wonders if her shaking hands are going to start making her thighs quiver. "The first thing I came up with is that a lot of the suspects are blonde. Two-thirds of them are blonde." The brain filter, there's another gaping hole in the fucking filter: she mentioned hair color. Never should have said that.

"Suspects?"

Better he picked up on that than on blonde. "Not suspects suspects. I just meant that I was trying to map this as if it were a case, so I didn't have another word even if that one wasn't, uh, wasn't the right word." God, Beckett, pull yourself together.

"Blonde?"

Of course he noticed. Can she dig a deeper hole or what? "I noticed that the majority are blonde, were blonde, and I'm not. So I thought you were attracted to blondes, mostly. You have a pre—, a penchant for blondes."

Castle's head snaps up. "Blonde? Was that what the wig was about this morning? I thought that was weird. You never had a bad hair day in your life. You were there on purpose, weren't you? In the patisserie?"

"I told you it was stupid, Castle. You're probably wondering how the hell I ever made Detective."

"No, I'm wondering how the hell you ever thought these women, these twelve women, whoever they are, had something you don't."

"They did. Do. Did. Have."

"What?"

"You. They had you."

"Oh, so this is about sex?"

"Castle, could you make this any more humiliating for me? Yes, it's about sex, but not really. It's a lot more than that."

"These are twelve women who had sex with me."

"Yes, Castle. They had sex with you, you had sex with them. Jumped their bones. Got it on. Hid the salami. Did the nasty. Hooked up. Got laid. Got lucky. Knocked boots. Shagged. Fucked like bunnies."

"Are you through?"

"I'm not sure."

He waits a few moments. "If they're all women since the day I met you, I can guarantee you something."

She should look him in the eye, but she can't. She's trying not to throw up or burst into tears or run out. "What?"

"They may have had sex with me, but they never had me. Not body and soul, Beckett. Not in the last three years, three weeks and five days."

"What?"

"I didn't get seven sixty-eight on my math SATs, but I know exactly how long it's been since I met you. Three years, three weeks and five days ago. March ninth, two thousand nine. And nobody, but nobody, has had me since then."

"Oh."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Um, yeah."

"What else did you consider, besides hair color?"

"Boobs." She's fast approaching the international date line of panic. She's praying for a sinkhole to open up under her part of the sofa and suck her into the middle of the earth. A black pit. No return. She told him about boobs.

"Beckett? Kate?"

He has moved right next to her. She wonders if it is clinically possible to die of humiliation.

"Is your top still wet?"

One of her hands, of its own volition, betrays her by moving out from under her thigh and touching the neckline of her jersey. "Yes."

He just inched so close that their legs are touching. "Then can I take it off?"

"What?"

"May I take off your top? I want to prove something to you." He's gripping the hem between his thumb and two fingers.

If she dies this minute it might not be from humiliation, after all. At least she's wearing a nice bra. A very nice bra. She nods her head. He uses both his hands to peel her top off, and when he's done he drops it on the floor. She watches it land on the rug, a damp blob on the very expensive rug. He doesn't mind that it's there. Oh.

"I promise you that it's not about the boobs. Even if I hadn't seen yours, it wouldn't be about the boobs."

Her other hand shoots out from under her thigh and she crosses her arms over her chest. "You saw them?"

"Yes. Not them, it. One. I saw one when your apartment was on fire and I had to help you out of the tub."

"I told you not to look!"

"You told me that after I'd already seen them. One. Geez, Beckett. It's not about the boobs."

She's suddenly brave. Maybe it's that the oxygen is finally reaching her brain through all the holes in the filter. "You saying you don't like my boobs, Castle? That they're of no, no merit?"

Without her noticing, his fingers had snaked under one bra strap and pushed it off her shoulder. "Oh, they're of merit. The Girl Scouts could make a merit badge for yours. Or the Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts definitely would." And at that precise moment, her bra slides off. He had managed to unhook it while he was telling her about merit badges, and she hadn't even known it. "Leveling the playing field here," he murmurs, gathering up the bra and dropping it next to her wet top.

"Playing field?" She's apparently incapacitated. Can only parrot responses.

"Now we're both naked from the waist up."

"Half naked."

"Half naked."

"Not the important half."

"I dunno, Beckett, that half of yours looks pretty important to me. Gorgeously important."

"Mmm."

He's leaning in to her. "Remember what you said to me at the door?"

"The door?" Parrot again.

"Yes, the door. You said 'I'm going to kiss you now.' That you were going to kiss me harder than anyone you'd kissed in your life. So that's what I'm going to do. Kiss you like that."

He does, but her response is nothing like his had been. Hers is a full-blown, full-on, bring-it-on, lips-teeth-tongue-hands answer, and by the time they briefly part, she's on his lap, straddling him. "Castle," she says, somehow managing to form the word. "Is there anyone here?"

"Here?" Now he's the parrot.

"Anyone here besides us?"

"No, just us. The two of us."

"Thank God," she says. "So, what do you think?"

"Think?" He may be worse off than she is.

"About my boobs, Castle." She takes one hand off his shoulder to palm her left breast. "They both good? Second one measure up to the one you saw before?"

"Oh, definitely," he says. "But you know, I have to check."

She has no idea how he did it—he's that strong? that fast?—but in one incredible move he has her on her back on the sofa, with his left hand caressing one of her breasts, his mouth consuming the other, and his right hand working on the button of her jeans. If he's going for that, she's not far behind. She thought she had chuckled silently at her unintentional wordplay as she reached her hand between them to untie his sweatpants, but she must not have.

"What's so funny, Beckett?"

"I'll tell you later. Don't use your mouth for talking right now, please." She slides both her hands around the small of his back to pull off his sweatpants, and as she moves them down over his obviously magnificent ass she's surprised to find nothing but skin. At the same time, he has managed to get her pants unbuttoned and unzipped and makes a similar discovery.

"Commando?" They yelp in unison.

"Did you know I was coming, Castle?"

"Oh, God, I hope so," he says, drawing his fingers slowly up the inside of her thigh. "Like, in about a minute." And with no warning at all he plunges two fingers into her as he massages her clit with his thumb.

Had she even the remotest sense of time, she'd have thought, "less than a minute," and she'd have been right. She arches up so violently that she's surprised—once her ability to reason returns—that she doesn't hurt him. Her entire body is contracting, inside and out, and she's involuntarily pulling him hard against her with her calves, feet and hands wrapped around his back and his buttocks. She's never been noisy during sex, so this first time with him has another first as she screams. "Ohgodohgodohgodohgod and all the saints."

Not long after, in the brief interval between her cooling down and heating up again, he pulls the elastic from her ponytail to let her hair fall loose around her face. "Really?" he says. "All the saints?"

She laughs. "I shouldn't tell you this."

"Tell me what?"

"Don't want to inflate your ego any more than I have."

"Tell me."

"First time I've ever made any noise in bed."

"We're not in bed, we're on the sofa."

"Which is something I'm about to address, but all the saints?"

"Yeah, I wanna know about all the saints, Beckett."

"That was heaven. I think I saw all the saints."

"Oh, that was nothing. Just you wait."

"Just you wait, buster." She reaches down and wraps her fingers around his formidable erection. "Want to put this to some good use?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Me, too, so we have to leave this sofa and get to your bed. There's not enough room on here."

"Don't have to tell me twice, Beckett. I'm up."

"I can see that," she says, giving him a squeeze.

When they're upright and walking to his bedroom, she takes his hand. "Time for Plan D, Castle."

"What?"

"Plan D," she repeats.

"What's that?"

"I'm about to tell you. Or better yet, show you."

 **A/N** Yes, there will be an epilogue.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

When Beckett opens her eyes, everything seems warm and familiar. Maybe because it's the fourth time she has woken up in this bed since she fell into it. Might be the fifth? Sixth? She's lost count of everything. Castle is flat on his back next to her. Her right leg is hooked over his left and her head is on his chest. She raises it a little to kiss him in the general vicinity of his mouth. "Castle?"

"Mrff."

"Are you awake?"

"Yes. I think. I might be dead."

"Not possible. No dead man could do what you just did."

"I think you might have killed me, Beckett. With that last, you know, thing."

"You told me you loved that."

"I did. I do. But I have never had this much sex, especially such incredible, mind-boggling sex, in — what time is it, anyway?"

She stretches over him to check the clock on the nightstand, and rolls back onto him. "Five-thirty."

"A.M. or P.M.?" His eyes are half open and he pushes a lock of her wild hair behind her ear.

"A.M. We came in here at five in the afternoon. So, twelve and a half hours."

"Have you ever had this much sex in twelve and a half hours, Beckett?"

"No."

"Was that Plan D? You never told me what Plan D was."

"Oh, God, Castle, we passed Plan D about ten hours ago. I think we got to Plan X."

"X? Was that X? What does X stand for?"

"X as in the previously unknown, Castle. Never tried it before."

He chuckles happily. "Do you think you can walk?"

"Probably not."

"Good, then we can just stay here." He sighs contentedly and closes his eyes again.

"You conking out on me again, Castle?"

"Hey, I did not conk out on you."

"Huh."

"I did not conk out on you, at least not before finishing, which is what matters."

"That's true. That's deliciously true." She relaxes completely on top of him for a moment, but not too long.

"Ooh, what are you doing, Beckett?"

"Nipping your nipple."

"It's a little tender there."

"Tell me about it." She kisses his chest, and when she begins to feel his breathing even out, knows that he's asleep. She's craving coffee, so she turns on her side, sits up—not without a little giddiness—and looks around for her top. She'll just pull it on and head for the kitchen. Oh. Right. Her coffee-spattered top is on the living room floor. She'll wear his NYPD AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT tee shirt instead. It will smell of him and he'll like it on her. She looks around and sees nothing out of place except one pillow collapsed against the wall. Oh, yeah. That. She giggles at the memory, second time she's giggled since she came through the front door. That has to be a record.

Another memory pushes that one aside: she and Castle had taken off all their clothes in the living room and she'd thrown his shirt into the kitchen sink. Oh, shit, Alexis. No, he said Alexis was sleeping over at a friend's house since it's spring break and she has no school this morning. Thank God. And who knows where Martha is, but it's not here, so it's safe for Beckett to go to the living room naked and pick up her soggy shirt on the way to the kitchen. She walks through the office door and sees—holy shit. It's his clothes. Her clothes. Well, her bra and jeans and his sweatpants. All of it in a neat stack. The panic she felt yesterday is pouring back in, and she tries to calm herself with deep breaths. Maybe the tidiness fairy came in through the window and did it, and put her shirt in the sink to soak with Castle's.

She's trying to envision the tidiness fairy when she sees something else: a hot-pink Post-It note that's curling slightly on top of the stack. Oh, God. The tidiness fairy has red hair and favors clothes in colors that do not occur in nature. Beckett leans over to read the note. "Good morning, darlings. Don't worry about me, I'll be asleep until noon, at least." She squints. What is that at the end? A winking smiley face.

;)

If you could choke to death suppressing a scream, Beckett would be forever motionless on the floor. Instead, she's hightailing it to the bedroom, where her leap onto the bed jolts her partner awake.

"Castle! Get up, get up, get up. We have to leave."

"What?"

"Take these, or some jeans, and put them on, right now," she tosses his sweatpants to him and quickly puts on her bra and jeans. "Which drawer has your tee shirts?"

"What?"

"Stop saying 'what?' and tell me where your tee shirts are."

"Polos, Henleys or regular? Cartoon ones or—"

"Just tell me where the fucking shirts are."

"Fucking shirts? Oh, those are in a special place—ow!"

She's kneeling next to him, but lets go of his ear. "It's your mother."

He looks alarmed. "What about my mother?"

"I was going to the kitchen to make some coffee and I found our clothes in a perfect little stack by your office door, with this note on top." She sticks it on the back of his hand and watches horror arrive in his eyes.

"Is that a winking smiley face?"

"Yes, Castle, it is. And I cannot begin to calculate how long it will take for the mortification to leave my body. Now, please get up and get dressed because we are going to my place right now. Drawer?"

"The second one."

Ninety seconds later, they're presentable, or at least dressed, and at the front door. She grabs her bag, and he gathers up his phone, wallet and keys.

A minute after that, they're striding through his lobby.

"Morning, Detective. Mister Castle."

"Good morning, Mickey," they say as one.

There's a taxi right at the corner. Castle opens the door and they both slide in. Once Beckett has told the driver her address, she does some more breathing exercises. After they've gone several blocks, she gives her full attention to her partner. Her partner, partner.

"God, Castle," she whispers. "Look at you."

"I'm looking at you, Beckett."

"No, I mean you look like you just got laid."

"I did just get laid. Many times. Many, many memorable times. Unforgettable times."

"Shut up."

"Look at you, Beckett."

"What?"

"You're radiant. You're glowing. You're incandescent. Everything about you says sex. Lots and lots of of sex. Oodles of sex." He picks up her hand and kisses it. "Don't worry about it. Oh, and we're here." With the cab at the curb, he fishes a bill from his wallet, puts it in the plexiglas drawer, thanks the driver and gets out, pulling Beckett behind him.

She's on the sidewalk, taking the keys from her pocket when she turns to him. "Wait, wait. Did you just give the cabbie a hundred dollars?"

"Yup." He's bouncing on his toes. "Just sharing the love, Beckett."

She'd roll her eyes—and she hasn't done that in days—except it's adorable. He's adorable. "C'mon," she says, this time pulling him. In the elevator, and walking down the hall to her apartment, he's pressed up against her. While she tries to unlock the door, he puts both hands in her back pockets and squeezes. She yelps. "Don't! We have to get inside before anyone sees us."

It's only when they're in that she remembers. Remembers that she left in such a rush yesterday afternoon that she had put nothing away. No tidiness fairy had flown in overnight to tidy up. No, no, everything was right where she had left it. Everything being, front and center, the bimbo board. At some point during her ruminations she had even returned all the drivers' licenses to it, so the full array is in view. She spins around and moves to cover Castle's eyes with her hands.

"Don't look."

Too late. He's already agog, and peeling her hands off his face.

"Beckett?"

She does the only thing that seems sensible: rushes to the board and tries to cover it up with her body.

"Not gonna work," he says, picking her up and moving her to one side. "What is this? Oh, my God, it's the twelve women. Kyra, Meredith, Sophia, Chelsea, Gina, Willow, Irena, Ellie, Natalie, Carolina, Serena, Jacinda."

"The Dirty Dozen." See? The brain filter is still off, or shredded beyond repair.

Castle snorts. "That's what you called them?"

Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, so she confesses. "Full name is The Richard Castle Dirty Dozen."

"I don't know what to say, exactly."

"I do. Don't say anything, stop looking, and please, please, please, please, please never mention this again in your life. What I hope will be your very long life."

"That's only five 'pleases'." He's still gawking at the board.

"Okay. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please. There. That's twelve."

"You know, this should be ten, not twelve. No, nine."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"For the sake of accuracy. I never slept with Natalie or Jacinda and not really with Irena."

"Okay, I don't want you to define 'not really.' I'm already embarrassed beyond all limits. I'm in a new territory of embarrassment. A continent of embarrassment."

"I have to say, though, this is really impressive. This is exactly like a murder boa—. Oh, my God, Beckett, did you want to _kill_ them?"

"No. Yes. No. Look, it's not really a murder board."

"What is it then, other than the Dirty Dozen?"

"I can't tell you."

He steps towards her and wraps her in his arms. "You know I can find out."

"No, you can't," she mumbles into his shirt.

"I can. Because I knew your mind before, knew a lot of things, but now I know your body. Your b-o-d-y. And I am going to tickle this out of you. If that doesn't work, I will bring you to the edge of orgasm twelve times and leave you there. Tie you up and leave you there."

"Okay."

"I didn't hear you," he says, pulling back a little so he can see her face. "Would you repeat that?"

"OKAY. The Bimbo Board. I called it the Bimbo Board. Satisfied?"

She has never seen or heard anyone laugh as enthusiastically and uninhibitedly as Castle does then. Eventually he's laughing so hard that he grabs on to the board to keep from falling over, which only sends it, and him, crashing to the floor. Several of the little magnets fly off, scattering copies of drivers' licenses across the room.

Beckett crouches over him, worry in her face and voice. "Castle, are you hurt? Are you all right? Can you move your legs? Your arms?"

"Hold on," he gasps. "Let me see." He grabs her and pulls her tightly to his chest. "Yes! I can move. And once we have our clothes off I can really move."

She swats feebly at his chest and rolls over so that she can stand. "I need coffee first."

"Do you have the real thing or just swill?" he asks, resting on his forearms.

"Swill. I'm going to run across the street and get us something good, okay?"

"Okay."

Less than five minutes later she's back with two large coffees and two cinnamon buns. "Did you miss me?" he asks from his perch on her sofa.

"You and your threats?" she answers, setting the bag on the counter. "Absolutely not. Stay there. I'm coming over."

"No breakfast in bed?"

"No. I want those sheets to be crumb-free when we hit them."

Castle walks to the sofa and props himself up on one end; she sits between his legs, her back against his chest. They're silent and content as they sip coffee and gorge themselves on the cinnamon buns, and once or twice she licks the icing off his fingers, which gives them both considerable pleasure and X-rated thoughts.

"You know what, Beckett?" His voice is very quiet. "You're right, those twelve women do have something in common, but not what you thought. With the exception of Kyra, every single one of them want or wanted something from me. You never did."

"I do now," she says, craning her neck so that she can see him properly. "I want you."

"I know, and I want you. You have me. But they wanted something else: my money or my power or my access to power, the hot restaurants. You never wanted any of that. That's the answer to your question, what they have that you don't. Greed. They're greedy."

Beckett rolls over, gets up on her knees and kisses him with everything she has. "Thank you, Castle."

"No need to thank me."

"Yes, there is." She rolls over again to settle between his legs. After a minute she looks up at him again. "I do want something from you, Castle."

"Oh yeah? What?"

"Your Ferrari."

"Esposito and Ryan want it, too. You'll have to wrestle them for it."

"I thought you didn't want anyone but you to wrestle me."

"That's true. The Ferrari turns you on, huh?"

"It's a sex machine, Castle."

"I thought I was a sex machine."

"You are. That's why I think we should go to your garage, get the Ferrari, drive way out in the country, park under a tree, and have wild sex in the car."

"With the top down?"

"Of course with the top down."

"You do know I'm referring to your top, not the car roof."

"Castle!"

"I love your thinking, Beckett, but it's still too cold for that. Can we do it when the weather's a little warmer?"

"Sure. Especially if you let me drive."

"I'll let you drive some of the time. This is a fifty-fifty partnership, right?"

"Right. But what about now?"

"Didn't we already establish that it's too cold right now?"

"Yes, but I meant here. Indoors. In my bed. I know your motor's revved up, Castle. I can feel it. I'm lying against it."

"Beckett, your language!"

"Language, my ass. Can I drive?"

"Where's your bed?"

"Right through there."

"I'll race you."

 **A/N** That's the end of this little adventure. Everything worked out! Enormous thanks to everyone who read, reviewed, followed and favorited.


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